In addition to updating Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman for level-85 players, we're also excited about another patch 4.1 feature: Guild Challenges. Built into the Info panel of the guild user interface, Guild Challenges will be weekly tasks guild groups can tackle for additional guild experience, achievements, and gold.

This feature has been designed and implemented to be quite simple. At the top of the guild user interface Info pane, a new Guild Challenges section will be displayed and broken into three categories: Dungeons, Raids, and Rated Battlegrounds. Any guild group will qualify for Guild Challenges credit and there is a set number of times each challenge can be completed per week. There’s no need to add a quest to your Quest Log or anything of that nature. Just grab a guild group eligible for any of the challenges and go.

Completing a Guild Challenge will result in a popup to confirm credit has been awarded, similar to achievement popups (or “toasts”). The participating guild members will then earn experience for their guild. In addition, a gold reward will be deposited directly to the Guild Vault. The gold and experience rewarded varies for each challenge type, but you won’t have to worry about receiving reduced rewards if, say, you happen to be in a guild group that completes a raid or dungeon on normal difficulty. Since there is a limited number of times each challenge type can be completed per week, we want to make sure guilds don’t feel set back if a guild group of level-18 players receives credit for completing Deadmines, versus a level-85 guild group completing Heroic Deadmines. The same applies to normal and Heroic difficulty raid progression. Provided the content is level-appropriate for your guild group, you’ll earn experience and gold for your guild.

To earn Guild Dungeon Challenge credit, the 5-player party must be composed of at least 3 guild members. Raid and Rated Battleground Challenges require that 8 out of 10 players be guild members, while 20 guild members are required to earn credit for 25-player raids. To earn gold for Guild Challenge rewards, a guild must be level 5 or higher and the participating members must have earned honored reputation with the guild. For example, 3 out of 5 guild members in a 5-player party must be honored to earn gold for the guild. If those three guild members have only reached friendly reputation, they would still receive credit and earn guild experience, but the guild would not receive gold.

So, let’s say your guild has been regularly hitting the daily experience cap. You might be wondering how beneficial it’d be to do Guild Challenges. Well wonder no more, amigos: Guild Challenges award guild experience above the cap. Think of it like rested experience. The guild experience cap will extend itself relative to the guild experience earned by completing these challenges. It’s a great way to get an extra edge on your guild leveling! Not only that, if your guild reaches the level cap, continuing to partake in Guild Challenges will yield a much more substantial sum of gold deposited directly into the Guild Vault.

We’re very happy with Guild Challenges and feel that they’re a fun way to continue expanding upon all of the new guild features added in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Your feedback regarding this system is always appreciated, as you can be sure we’ll be looking for ways to beef it up in future patches.

Update - Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - March 29

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

March 25 - March 29Dungeons & RaidsThe Bastion of Twilight

A bug has been fixed that could cause Flame Strike during the Ascendant Council encounter (Heroic difficulty) to target an existing fire patch, instead of creating a new one.

Guilds

The guild perk “Have Group, Will Travel” no longer allows players to summon guild mates inside dungeons, raids, Battlegrounds, or Tol Barad when the battle is in progress. It will also not function while the player is on any transport.

Quests & CreaturesUldum

Hostile NPCs are no longer present at the Temple of Uldum once the cutscene from picking up "Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum" finishes playing.

Rogers (Canadian ISP) admits throttling World of WarcraftArsTechnica has a very interesting article about how Rogers has been throttling traffic from WoW for the past few weeks. According to the reply from Rogers (pasted below), the problem might not be fixed before June.

"Our tests have determined that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that can interfere with World of Warcraft," said Rogers. "We have been in contact with the game manufacturer and we have been working with our equipment supplier to overcome this problem.

"We recently introduced a software modification to solve the problems our customers are experiencing with World of Warcraft. However, there have been recent changes to the game, which has created new problems. A second software modification to address these new issues will not be ready until June."

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)Word of Glory 20sec cooldown in Patch 4.1
I recently spoke to the devs about this, and their direction on it has not changed. We want Ret to be able to heal. However, if a Ret paladin is healing so often that a 20 second cooldown is a constraint, then that Ret paladin is spending too many GCDs healing. Spending a lot of GCDs on heals isn’t what we want a DPS spec to be doing.

We’d rather it be a big heal that is used infrequently, than a small heal that is only makes a difference to you if you give a lot of your GCDs to it. (Source)

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)Holy Word: Sanctuary
I had a talk with the devs about this very issue yesterday, and they are well aware of this subject, and tend to agree with those of us (one of my mains is a holy priest) who have noticed that Sanctuary could do with a buff.

There are two things that have to be dealt with here: 1) Holy priest AE healing is pretty decent as-is, and 2) we don’t want Sanctuary to be so similar to Healing Rain.

Again, the devs agree that a modest buff is a fair solution, although it is hard to know when or by what magnitude such a buff might come along. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)Unstable Affliction Dispell Penalty
We think the silence from dispelling Unstable Affliction is sufficiently punitive, but the damage may be too low currently - - that it isn’t scary enough to make it a decision to dispel or not.

In general, it’s not our goal to offer dispel protection for every dot or hot out there, but Unstable Affliction is a spell and mechanic we like and we want to make sure it’s doing its job. Maybe a damage bump would be enough, but in any case it's an ability we're looking at. (Source)